“Will we ever get to go home?”
“I don’t know.” Sighing, I sat on the closed toilet with the towel wrapped around me, exhausted and not wanting to have this conversation. But the time is now. The longer I avoided it, the angrier she would get with me. I couldn’t have my little sister mad at me right now. Not when everything was gone and all we had was each other. “Squirt, we don’t have a home to go to anymore. Whatever money we get on that house, it won’t be enough to fix it on time for us to leave here any time soon. At most, we will be lucky enough to get a hotel, and even then, we would need an adult like Kurt to be with us.”
She lowered her head into her arms. “I hate this place. Not because it’s not pretty. It is. Very, in fact. But, it’s not ours. We were supposed to get a house like this ourselves. You, me, Kurt, and mom. It’s not the same because it belongs to someone else.”
“I know what you’re saying.” Coming here made me uncomfortable. This wasn’t our home and we didn’t know these people. I couldn’t help wondering if we were under a microscope. “What do you think about the Kendricks so far?”
She shrugged. “The Kendricks are nice, I guess, but that will change. They’ll get scared and throw us out.”
“Wow.” Smirking, I shook my head. “You’ve gotten so used to the dysfunction that you don’t even know what it’s like to live in a functional household. Or rather, one that’s more functional than ours.”
“Do you like it here?” Nadia turned and faced me. “You asked them enough questions to make it sound like you don’t.”
“No, it’s not that. I just have a hard time trusting people who are too good to be true. It makes me wonder if these guys might have had something to do with the fire or know of someone else who does.”
“Do you think mommy is still alive?”
“Yes.” I nodded, assuring myself more than her. “As long as we don’t have any information that says otherwise, I’m going to believe that. Mason is staying on top of those trying to find her, so that’s something. When Kurt gets better, we’ll do the same. While you’re at school, of course.”
“I don’t want to go to school.”
“Then we’ll talk to the Kendricks about giving us a few days to get used to our new situation, okay? Even though we’ve been in tight situations before, once we figured out how to deal with them, we made it through. This is no exception. We just need some time to catch our breath—that’s all.”
Nadia slipped her arms around my neck for a hug. “I’m glad I have you.”
“Same here.” Smiling, I pulled her as tight as my sore body allowed. “I’m glad I have you, too, Squirt.”
“I think that girl is at the door, by the way.”
I looked at the space under the door. Even though I couldn’t see a shadow under it due to the rug, I didn’t doubt my sister. I signaled for Nadia to stay quiet while I got dressed as fast as possible. I wasn’t in any condition to fight this girl, but I would if I had to. Too bad I left my crutches back in my room and hobbled my way here.
I opened the door and glanced in the hallway.
“Your sister isn’t supernatural, is she?” Jayden peeled her back off the wall and leaned on the opposite one with her arms crossed.
“No,” I replied. “She’s just extremely perceptive because she’s been living with the supernatural for all of her life.”
“She sure picked up on me standing in this hall.”
Sighing, I motioned for Nadia to come out of hiding in the bathroom. Like before, she went into a quiet mode and hid behind me for cover. Jayden stared before offering up a forced, half-smile, but my little sister refused to return it. Perhaps she didn’t buy the attempted friendliness anymore than I did.
“My sister is normal.” I motioned for her to go ahead of me while I used the wall for leverage. “Thanks for lending me the clothes, but unless there’s something else you need from me, I’m really tired.”
“You’re welcome,” she mumbled as she went the opposite direction and yelled at the top of the staircase, “Mom! Come quick. It’s Phaedra. She passed out.”
“What the hell are you trying to do?” I turned, ready to slam her into a wall if she laid one hand on me.
“Sound the alarm, since there’s no way I’m touching you.” She flashed her gloved hands. “I’m not only a precog, but I’m also a healer, which means I can sense every injury on you. Ones I’d prefer not to take on myself.”
Rather than indulge this psycho teen, I continued limping down the hall. Each jolt of my body sent a pain spasm through my head, mounting and digging down deep with every step. By the time I made it to the bedroom, I dropped our clothes on the floor.
The room dipped and swayed.
“Phae?” Nadia asked, hurrying toward me. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m not...” I gulped through nausea creeping up the back of my throat. “I’m not feeling...”
The room shifted under my feet and I collapsed to the floor. I couldn’t tell if it was my powers or something else that dropped me like a wet towel. The last thing I remember was seeing Bree panic and standing at the door frame. Before she could reach me, the room went dark.
Chapter Six
It was nighttime when I woke up. The curtains had been drawn and a small TV was playing an old sitcom, though the volume was turned down low. Nadia must have asked for it. We had become so used to sleeping with the TV on to distract us from the bumping coming from our attic, that we had a hard time sleeping without it.
Nadia was slumbering on the floor curled into a ball next to my bed. She kicked off her covers and only left her pillow under her head as she clutched a stuffed panda and llama. Just beyond her was a duffle bag with some clothes hanging out. My clothes, in fact. Mason must have stopped by while I was asleep.
My head hurt like someone had thrown a brick through it. Just like before, the room seemed to move when I wasn’t. After pushing back the blankets, I stood and shuffled toward the window and parted the blinds with my fingers. Dusk had just tinted the sky a shade brighter.
Fatigue came out of nowhere tearing into my body again. I staggered toward the bed and I grabbed my thick blanket and my pillow. If I couldn’t trust myself to lift Nadia off the floor and into my bed, then I’d have to sleep down there with her. I dropped to my knees and pulled my comforter over both of us. It wasn’t long before I fell asleep again.
#
I woke to the sound of a door closing downstairs. Nadia was nowhere around. Panic swept through me. The sound of a car alarm unlocking the doors sent me hustling to the window. When I opened the blinds, Ian was leading the way with a newspaper under one arm and a travel mug in the other. Behind him, Jayden had a backpack clutched over her shoulder.
Wait. What day was it? A school day? Monday? Screw the crutches. I needed to find my sister. I took a few steps when sharp pain convinced me those crutches were my friends. I snatched them from the wall and hobbled down the hall toward the staircase.
When I reached the first floor, I opened the front door. Two beeps went off. They must have had a security system installed.
“Phaedra?” Drying her hands on a towel, Bree sauntered down the hall. “You’re awake and moving. We never thought you would be—”
“Cut the bullshit,” I snapped. “Where’s my sister?”
The hallway closet door snapped back, cracking the wood around the hinges. I gulped, hoping nothing would come flying out there to kill us before I could get answers.
“Oh my gosh." Bree’s entire body jerked and her eyes went wide. She took a breath to steady her nerves. “She’s in the kitchen having some cereal. She’s been holding vigil at your side since Saturday night. I managed to coax her out of that room by promising to let her skip school today. Not that I wouldn’t let her stay home anyway. You both have been through enough to earn a couple of days off if you ask me.” She went to the closet and gently closed the door. She turned and motioned for me to follow. “She’s right in here. Promise. We hav
en’t cut her into little pieces and buried her in the crawlspace.”
“Not funny.” I hobbled down the hall until I reached the bright kitchen lighting. A smile bowed my lips.
Nadia was sitting at the table spooning into her cereal when she stopped, dropped everything and pushed me away from the table to get to me. Smiling, she hugged me tight like she always did.
“Slow down, you two.” Bree went to the fridge and retrieved two eggs. “While I love a reunion like anyone else, you need to finish your cereal and your sister needs to rest. No more overdoing it. You scared the crap out of Ian and me when we found you on the floor like that. We called your doctor and she said it was due most likely due to overdoing it, which is why rest was number one on her list.”
Rather than start an unnecessary fight I wasn’t in the mood for, I signaled for Nadia to take her seat while I sat next to her. If this woman wanted to play our surrogate mother, then fine. She might as well enjoy it while it lasts because it wasn’t going to be like this forever.
“Any word on our mom?” I asked while setting my crutches aside.
“None.” Bree sighed as she started scrambling the eggs in a bowl. “Mason stopped by yesterday. He brought you guys some things from your house. He also visited with Kurt. He’s still unconscious though.”
“What exactly is being done to find her?”
“I’m not sure and I didn’t ask. But, I do know there are other members of the supernatural community who are out there looking for her, too.”
“To kill her?”
She stopped and stared. “I won’t lie to you. If she does anything that threatens our exposure, all bets are off. But that’s the strange part. A woman with her powers should’ve torn apart the street once she was out of the attic. She didn’t. Mason suspects she’s probably hurt and confused and wandering the streets like a stray or someone might have kidnapped her.”
“I’m more apt to believe she’s wandering. While my mom might be a loon, she has no tolerance for anyone who threatens her safety. She’ll either terrorize or annihilate them.”
“You speak like a person from experience.”
“I am.” Anyone who knew our history knew that I had become the object of her rage more times than I cared to count. It was a way of life for us. There was no way I’d classify it as abuse because my mother never did it intentionally. The voices in her head were the enemy. She was just their tool.
“All of this is speculation, of course.” Bree continued scrambling the eggs in a hot pan. “We won’t know anything for sure until we find her.”
“Who’s this we, by the way?”
“Should we be talking about this?” She nodded her head towards Nadia.
I waved a dismissive hand. “With everything this kid has experienced, trust me when I say this conversation is about as inappropriate to her as chewing with your mouth open.”
Shaking her head, she went back to her task. “As I said before, I don’t know who we are, but you might want to talk to Mason about that. My guess is he’s using his resources from his securities firm to find answers. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean he’s managing the entire search either.”
“I can’t sit in this house and do nothing. If my mother is out there, then my sister and I are going to be the main people she’ll come after. We’ve been her rag dolls for years. Trust me when I say we’re all she knows.”
“But...” Nadia lowered her spoon into her bowl. “If mommy comes for us, she’ll come here and she won’t be happy. She’ll destroy this place and everyone inside because she doesn’t like it when people take her babies. You and me, that is.”
“Good point.” I turned sideways in my chair for a better view of Bree. “Look, while we appreciate your hospitality, we really need to go.”
“But you can’t leave.” Bree scrapped the eggs onto a plate that already had toast and bacon on it.
“What do you mean we can't leave?”
“You can’t.” Bree brought the plate over to the table and sat it in front of me. “Just trust me on this, okay?”
I had no reason to trust her on anything with regards to us. Something else—something bigger—was going on. There had to be. There always was.
“Let me be straight about something.” I pushed the plate aside. “Our house didn’t get in such bad shape by itself. It had help. That roof didn’t blow off the hinges the other night because of a gas explosion either. The best I can tell is my power is equal to that of my mother’s, only we both know that neither one of us will live long enough to test that theory, should it ever come to that. So, it’s your best interest to be straight with me, since my emotions usually trigger a reaction.”
Nadia scooted away from the table and dropped to the floor with her hands over her head and her legs pulled up tight to her chest as if she were assuming a crash position. I had hoped for something more dramatic, but that would have to do since my powers didn’t always strike out on cue. That was probably for the best anyway.
Bree glanced at my sister before going back into the kitchen to wipe down one of the counters. Something about the thoughtful look on her face said it was busy-work more than anything else.
“There’s a lot you still need to learn about this world,” she said, stopping mid-wipe. She threw the cloth aside and leaned her back on the counter. “There’s always a plan for a family once they enter into the supernatural fold or when their children are accepted into the hub. The committee decides what level they are—based on their abilities of course—to ensure their protection from the outside world while living in the supernatural one. Those levels include how much protection we need from them.”
“I can’t imagine which level we fit into.”
“You don’t.” She stared. “People along your family line would’ve been put down the second her schizophrenia materialized. Therefore, your mother, you and your sister would never have been born. Thankfully, this is a different age and we’re not into killing children. However, we had to come up with another plan. This safehouse was one of them.”
“Safehouse? To keep us safe from what? Our own mother?”
“Not exactly. Your mother and her psychosis should be the least of your concerns.”
A chair yanked out of the table and slammed down the hall somewhere. Wood might have cracked, too, but I wasn’t sure. It could’ve hit the wall or slammed against the floor—it didn’t matter. My heart pounded and my body trembled. Sometimes I can catch it before it lets loose, but then there are times like these where everyone is stunned to silence...or in Nadia’s case, probably widened eyes and shaking to death. I couldn’t see under the table, which was probably for the best.
“I suggest you start making sense to me or that chair might not be the only casualty.” I kept my voice low and forced myself to stay relaxed before I leveled a perfectly good home.
Bree switched her attention from the path left by the piece of furniture to me. She gulped. “Arson is suspected by both humans and supernaturals because the fire started on the roof. Lighter fluid was found on small pieces of tile at the scene.”
“Why not throw a cocktail through her window?”
“Nobody has ruled that out yet. Throwing it on the roof means there’s more time for the burn to happen. Throwing it through a window would’ve woken you guys up, and maybe given you and Kurt a chance to douse the flames before they got out of control. Plus, they found more of the lighter on shrubs at the back of the house, meaning they probably stood right next to the bushes when they tossed whatever bottle or rag containing the fluid on the roof.”
“Why—in the world—would anyone do this? We don’t have any enemies.” Of course, we knew people who had issues with Mason because he was an incubus. A demon was a demon in their eyes. They wanted him dead. It has been months and I thought the hags would've run out of town by now. Of course, there weren’t exactly any gates to keep them from coming back to Colburn, North Carolina either.
“There’s one more thing you sh
ould know.” Bree stopped talking when Nadia stood beside me and tried to ease her rump into my chair. Ms. Kendrick half-smiled and her shoulders relaxed a tad. “Because the authorities think arson is involved, they’ll need to question you guys. See if you might know who did this. It’s standard procedure.”
“I know. Tell me something I don’t.”
“Technically you and Nadia are minors and your guardian is missing. Kurt is laid up in the hospital, so this can go one of two ways. Either they can question you along with him or you can have an attorney present when they do.”
“Attorney?” I huffed and shook my head. “We can’t even afford fifteen minutes of babysitting. Oh, and in case you haven’t noticed, in this world, we are the hired help. When my mother isn’t designing or sewing something, she’s cleaning their houses on her good days.”
My mom picked that up as a side gig and I hated it. The thought of her cleaning someone else’s floors or scrubbing their toilets during her lucid periods sickened my stomach. She was meant to be a world-class designer, not a housemaid to world-class jackasses.
She wanted to save every dime possible and that was one of the best ways to get more of them. Kurt would create her client list for the week, and Mom would ask Mason for a fix to keep her head straight long enough for her to finish slaving over a hot stove. It wasn’t every day that some sorcerer or medium needed an evening gown or a designer suit, which yielded a nice chunk of money for the month. At most, they might need their favorite pair of trousers let out around the waist. That was nowhere near enough to pay the bills.
“Two have already stepped forward to help. Pro bono or for free.” Bree stood and helped herself to a cup of coffee that had finished brewing in the pot.
“You know as well as I do, nothing comes for free.” I slumped back in my seat. Every time we needed something, we opened ourselves up to indentured servitude. All because the preternaturals wanted to profit from their own kind, knowing they could get away with it because they knew we had no one to complain to.
Silent Scream (Bittersweet Series, Book 2) Page 5